Leveraging Wikipedia and Libraries as Agents of Inclusion and Visibility for Marginalized Communities
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2018 Anna Norris Distinguished Alumni Series with the Department of Romance and Classical Studies at Michigan State University. Title: Leveraging Wikipedia and Libraries as Agents of Inclusion and Visibility for Marginalized Communities: Librarians, Drag Queens and the LGBTQ+ Community of Québec
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Leveraging Wikipedia and Libraries as Agents of Inclusion and Visibility for Marginalized Communities
- 1. 2018 Anna Norris Distinguished Alumni Series Leveraging Wikipedia and Libraries as Agents of Inclusion and Visibility for Marginalized Communities: Librarians, Drag Queens and the LGBTQ+ Community of Québec Michael David MILLER, MLIS, Assistant Librarian Liaison Librarian for French Language Literature, Economics & LGBTQ+ Studies Humanities and Social Sciences Library | McGill University michael.david.miller@mcgill.ca | @BiblioQC Friday 30 November 2018 | Michigan State University
- 2. Who am I? – Education • Education : • Michigan State University • Bachelor of Arts in French Studies, May 2011 • Bachelor of Arts in Advertising, May 2011 • Université de Montréal • Master in Library and Information Science, May 2014
- 3. Who am I? – Libraries • Library Experience : • Student Library Assistant, Main Library, Michigan State University, August 2006 to August 2011 • Documentation Technician, Bibliothèque des lettres et sciences humaines, Université de Montréal, October 2011 to July 2013 • Reference Librarian, Bibliothèque paramédicale, Université de Montréal, August 2013 to February 2014 • Liaison Librarian, Humanities and Social Sciences Library, McGill University, March 2014 to Present
- 4. "I believe that Wikipedia is important for the future of libraries. I also believe that libraries are equally important to Wikipedia." (Proffitt, 2018 : pp. 1) Merrille Proffitt Senior Program Officer, OCLC Research, Editor, Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge @MSU Library: http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b12669853~S39a
- 5. What is Québec? • 2nd largest population – 8.4 millions • Physically largest province – 1 542 056 km2 • Only province or state in North America with French as the UNIQUE official language* • 94,6 % of the population understands French • 79,1 % has French as a first language • Québec City – capital and 2nd largest city • Montréal – largest city and economic centre *Only the Province of New Brunswick is officially bilingual. All other provinces have English as their unique official language. The federal government is also supposed to offer bilingual services across the country in areas under federal jurisdiction.
- 6. Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Vision for Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects
- 7. What is Wikipedia? • Encyclopedic project • Freely share the sum of all knowledge • Millions of articles in hundreds of languages • 5th most visited website in the world : https://www.alexa.com/topsites
- 8. Other projects • Wikimedia Commons • Wikidata • Wikisource • Wiktionary
- 9. Category is … Catégorie:LGBT au Québec • Categories are kind of like a subject heading or hashtag • 103 articles • CatégorieLGBT au Québec – October 2017 • 28,000+ articles on Québec • 2 million+ articles in French
- 10. "The cultural capital of Wikipedia is such that existence within it denotes a level of power and importance. The phenomenon of considering something or someone truly significant or insignificant, through its presence or absence on Wikipedia, can be a damaging one.” « Le capital culturel de Wikipédia est tel que l’existence à l’intérieur de ce dernier dénote un niveau de pouvoir et d’importance. Le phénomène de considérer quelque chose ou quelqu’un de vraiment significatif ou insignifiant, par sa présence ou par son absence sur Wikipédia, peut être néfaste. » (traduction libre) (Doyle, 2018 : P. 57) Kelly Doyle Wikipedian in Residence for Gender Equity at West Virginia University Chapter 5, Leveraging Wikipedia: connecting communities of knowledge
- 14. WikiLGBTQ+ Contribution Events DATE THEME EVENT PAGE August 2017 Québec Drag Queens https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Café_des_savoirs_libres/LGBTQ October 2017 Lieux & moments historiques de la communauté LGBTQ+ de Montréal https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Café_des_savoirs_libres/CSL_LGBTQ/25oct17 November 2017 Histoire de la Bibliothèque à livres ouverts https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Café_des_savoirs_libres/CSL_LGBTQ/22nov17 January 2018 Québec Drag Queens https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Café_des_savoirs_libres/CSL_LGBTQ/24jan18 February 2018 Écrivain-ne-s québécois-e-s https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Café_des_savoirs_libres/CSL_LGBTQ/14fev18 April 2018 Québec Drag Queens https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Café_des_savoirs_libres/LGBTQ/11avril18 August 2018 BAnQ est fière https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:BAnQ/Fierté October 2018 LGBTQ+ History Month at McGill – 2 activities at McGill Library https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/McGill_University_Library/LGBTQ_History_Month_at_McGill_(L GBTQ_History_Month_in_October)?enroll=cbpfajxl&fbclid=IwAR0Bf7OQjweQWOs261WV1NLA_lO_McD3zZiq064 LG6MP5SY8lRgbwCb_Fok
- 16. Barbada de Barbades, Québécoise DragQueen https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbada_de_Barbades
- 17. Rita Baga, Québécoise DragQueen https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Baga
- 18. Descente policière au Bar Truxx https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truxx
- 19. Catégorie:LGBT au Québec • Kind of like a subject heading or hashtag • 134 articles – November 2018 • 114 articles – May 2018 • 103 articles – October 2017 • 30.1% INCREASE in articles in this Category in Francophone Wikipedia
- 20. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 22 11 0 1 6 4 1 5 34 0 4 5 3 6 4 6 2 32 11 1 1 6 4 1 5 35 2 4 5 6 9 4 6 2 DIVISION OF CATÉGORIE:LGBT AU QUÉBEC – MAY18 TO NOV18 # May 18 # Nov. 18
- 21. Challenges of Wikipedia Participation Sources Time Guidelines Misconceptions
- 22. Roosevelt, Eleanor, and Allida Mae Black. 2010. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers. The human rights years, 1945-1948. Charlottesville (Va.): University of Virginia Press “Where do human rights begin? In small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination.”
- 23. "The cultural capital of Wikipedia is such that existence within it denotes a level of power and importance. The phenomenon of considering something or someone truly significant or insignificant, through its presence or absence on Wikipedia, can be a damaging one.” « Le capital culturel de Wikipédia est tel que l'existence en elle dénote un niveau de pouvoir et d'importance. Le phénomène de considérer quelque chose ou quelqu’un de vraiment significatif ou insignifiant, par sa présence ou son absence sur Wikipédia, peut en être néfaste » (traduction libre) (Doyle, 2018 : P. 57) Kelly Doyle Wikipedian in Residence for Gender Equity at West Virginia University Chapter 5, Leveraging Wikipedia: connecting communities of knowledge
- 24. Category:LGBT in Michigan • 144 articles • 119 articles about people or politicians • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:LGB T_in_Michigan
- 25. The Role of Librarians BRING COMMUNITY TOGETHER - LIBRARY EVENTS COLLATE COLLECTIONS IN SUBJECT ARE OF EXPERTISE ADVOCATE FOR WIKIPEDIA/WIKIMEDIA INTEGRATION INTO LIBRARY WORKFLOWS WORK WITH FACULTY ON BRINING WIKIPEDIA/WIKIMEDIA INTO THE CLASSROOM APPLY CATEGORIES/CATÉGORIE S TO WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES SUBJECT LIBRARIANS IN MARGINALIZED AREAS, REACH OUT TO COMMUNITY GROUPS
- 26. The Role of Archivists Wikidata add archival holding info to property P485 Wikimedia Commons – add digitized collections Example: Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (https://fr.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Wikipédia:BAnQ) Incorporate Wikipedia / Wikimedia into archival processing workflows WikiData Wikimedia Commons Wikipedia Knowledge Sharing Academic Archivists, share your knowledge with small community archives, especially those in marginalized communities
- 27. R. David Lankes, Professor and Director of the School of Library & Information Science at the University of South Carolina “The Mission of Librarians is to Improve Society Through Facilitating Knowledge Creation in their Communities” (Lankes, 2011: P.15)
- 28. The Role of Professors • Stop the Villainization • Teach it and understand it (maybe with a librarian) • You use it, your students use it, your friends and family use it. • Your field expertise • Contribute to those articles and encourage your grad students to do the same • Wikipedia in the classroom • Teach with Wikipedia • Let your students contribute to the world’s biggest source of democratized information • Think Equity • Underrepresentation of Women, People of Colour and LGBTQ+ Peoples
- 29. Wiki Education • “Wiki Education connects higher education to Wikipedia, ensuring that the world’s most read source of information is more representative, accurate, and complete.” https://wikiedu.org/ • Teach with Wikipedia: https://wikiedu.org/teach- with-wikipedia/
- 30. R. David Lankes, Professor and Director of the School of Library & Information Science at the University of South Carolina “Bad Libraries build collections. Good libraries build services (of which a collection is only one). Great libraries build Communities” « Des mauvaises bibliothèques développent des collections, des bonnes bibliothèques conçoivent des services ( dont une collection n’en est qu’un) et des grandes bibliothèques forgent de la communauté » (traduction libre)
- 31. Selected Readings • Proffitt, M. (Ed.). (2018). Leveraging wikipedia : Connecting communities of knowledge. Chicago: ALA Editions, the American Library Association. • Lankes, R., & Lapointe, J. (2018). Exigeons de meilleures bibliothèques : Plaidoyer pour une bibliothéconomie nouvelle. Montréal: Les Ateliers de Sens public. (2018). • Lankes, R. (2016). Expect more : Demanding better libraries for today's complex world(2ième édition ed.).
- 32. Merci ! Questions ? Michael David Miller Librarian for French Literature, Economics and LGBTQ+ Studies Humanities and Social Sciences Library McGill University Library Email: michael.david.miller@mcgill.ca Twitter: @BiblioQC
Editor's Notes
- My name is Michael David MILLER, my Pronouns are he, him and his. To start, I’d like to situate myself within my Social contexte: I am a gay cisgender man, an anglophone immigrant to a francophone Québec, and grew up in an impoverished trailer park in Lennon Michigan, I now work at an Elite Canadian University that is world renoued as the Librarian for French Literature, Economics and LGBTQ+ Studies. I recognize my privilege to be able to be here before you today and say all of this. I think this is one of the things, the ability to affirm who I am, that motivates me to do this kind of work. There are many young men, women and gender non conforming people who have neither the freedom nor the security to be able to introduce themselves the way I just did for you today. There are many states and countries that are just a few hours plane ride away that portions of their population basic human rights. Moving on, I would like to thank the Anne Violin-Wigent and the Department of Romance and Classical Studies for bringing me here today to speak at the Inaugural Anna Norris Distinguished Alumni Series. I will admit, I was very happy to say yes, but I was not sure what made me a distinguished alumni because I still see myself as that 20 year-old Michael in Easan Ahmed’s class, failing to understand what direct and indirect objects are … Don’t worry Ehasan, I understand them now and can even accord the diret object with the auxilarly when it precedes avoir ! So who am I exactly ?
- Well, I am a graduate of MSU’s French Studies programme back when it was in Old Horticulture. I also have a degree in advertising studies from MSU In 2011, when I graduated, I went to the Université de Motnréal to study for the Maîtrise en bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information / Master of Library and Information Science
- I like to start my Wikipedia talks with this citation by Mereille Profitt who edited a volume of the intersections of Wikipedia and libraries. "I believe that Wikipedia is important for the future of libraries. I also believe that libraries are equally important to Wikipedia." (Proffitt, 2018 : pp. 1) This citation that begins the introduction of this edited volume really resonated with me. What if Wikipedia was a natural ally to libraries and what if the inverse were equally true ? So, I So, I drank the koolaid and believe that Wikipedia and Libraries need to enter into a long term and modern open relationship. Why you ask, well to quote the Prime Minister of the Canadian Federation, because it’s 2018 And who better positioned to help make Wikipedia better than librarians ? We are the referencing and synthesizing gods. Okay, maybe that was a bit overkill, but you get what I’m trying to say.
- Given that I am going to be speaking a lot about Québec today, I thought it important to, in the event that some are unfamiliar with this francophone north-American society, to quickly go over some baseline facts about Québec. 2nd largest population – 8.4 millions Physically largest province – 1 542 056 km2 Only province or state in North America with French as the UNIQUE official language* 94,6 % of the population understands French 79,1 % has French as a first language Québec City – capital and 2nd largest city Montréal – largest city and economic centre *Only the Province of New Brunswick is officially bilingual. All other provinces have English as their unique official language. The federal government is also supposed to offer bilingual services across the country in areas under federal jurisdiction.
- Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. One might think that that is the raison d’être of your local public or university library, but in all truthfulness, that is also the vision of the Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. What exactly is Wikipedia?
- 5.7 million in English 2 million in French
- Today we are going to focus on the Catégorie:LGBT au Québec In Wikipedia, editors, something that we all can be, can add categories, or for the librarians in the room, subject headings and our friends who don’t understand weird library lingo, think of the categories as hashtags. These categories categorize the content of Wikipedia into themes. The umbrella category in francophone Wikipedia is LGBT au Québec. Created 10 new articles Added category to 20 existing articles
- Let’s take a moment and look at this quote by Kelly Doyle, Wikipedia in Residence for Gender Equity at the West Viriginia Univeristy. "The cultural capital of Wikipedia is such that existence within it denotes a level of power and importance. The phenomenon of considering something or someone truly significant or insignificant, through its presence or absence on Wikipedia, can be a damaging one.” « Le capital culturel de Wikipédia est tel que l’existence à l’intérieur de ce dernier dénote un niveau de pouvoir et d’importance. Le phénomène de considérer quelque chose ou quelqu’un de vraiment significatif ou insignifiant, par sa présence ou par son absence sur Wikipédia, peut être néfaste. » (traduction libre) (Doyle, 2018 : P. 57) One of the reasons that my interest sparked in working with Wikipedia as an Academic Librarian was this idea of existence and visibility and if subject areas that ought to be covered are not adequately present on the World’d most important information source, what type of image does that send to a young boy, girl or gender-questioning person about the world they live in ?
- Historique de ma participation : Ce même été, on fêtait le 375e anniversaire de Montréal, le 150e anniversaire du Canada, la toute première Fierté Canada à Montréal et le 30e anniversaire d’une des personnalités LGBTQ+ les plus importantes au Québec, la célèbre Dragqueen, Mado Lamotte. Donc, j’ai fait des recherches de sur cette Dragqueen pour voir son article Wikipédia et … Quand j’ai trouvé son article, j’étais triste de voir sa qualité, la photo n’était pas bonne (et c’est encore le cas), ce n’était pas un bel article comme les articles qu’on trouve en français qui portent sur les Dragqueens étasuniennes. Donc, j’ai organisé une soirée contributive à Wikipédia pour améliorer l’article de Mado Lamotte au Café la Graine brûlée qui se trouve dans le Village gai de Montréal. C’était lors de cette première activité où je me suis rendu compte que ce n’tétait pas facile à synthétiser l’information pour toute une personne dans l’espace de quelques heures et qu’écrire des articles Wikipédia, ça prend beaucoup de temps. J’ai quand même pu ajouter quelques nouvelles informations sur Mado cette soirée-là.
- Historique de ma participation : Les amies qui m’ont convaincu de venir à Wikimainia m’ont également convaincu de venir aux soirées contributives de la Cinémathèque québécoise où on invitait une ou un cinéaste d’animation qui donnait une conférence et par la suite, on rédigeait l’article Wikipédia, prenait des photos pour Wikimedia Commons et on entrait des données dans WikiData. Je trouvais cette formule ingénieuse et j’ai demandé à Marina Gallet, Directrice des collections à la Cinémathèque québécoise, si je pouvais essayer son modèle avec la communauté LGBTQ+ québécoise. Dans l’esprit Wikipédia de partager, elle m’a généreusement donné sa bénédiction.
- Into slide on the wiki events
- Park that commemorates the victims of the Aids crisis in the 1980s and 1990s I thought it very important to make sure that landmarks of Québec’s lgbtq+ community be represented in French on Wikipedia Next on my list is to write about bars, buildings and clubs. We have the Canadian architecture collection at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library of McGill University, BAnQ has all publications published in Québec and about Québec in the world, if the resources exist to document this important cultural heritage of Québec, our libraries have the resources to make this happen.
- Next, the important cultural icons of our community, our drag queens. These artists are also important activists in our communities. I would even argue that they are the most important cultural entertainers of the Québec LGBTQ+ community. Only one drag queen from Québec had a Wikipedia article, now we are up to four. It is small, but it is a 300% increase. Haha Let’s take Barbada here. Barbada is the first drag queen in the French speaking world to do drag queen story hour in a library. And you know where her first story hour was, in the Grande Bibliothèque of Québec’s National Library and Archives. I pitched the idea to Sébastien and reached out to the Head Librarian of the Espace Jeunes (children’s library) and she gladly accepted. Now Barbada tours libraries in the province doing story hours. People love it. I’m so proud of this.
- Next we have Rita Baga, another one of the important drag queens of Montréal. She and Barbada have been featured in a documentary about DragQueens in Québec that aired on Radio-Canada, the large francophone télévision diffuser.
- I had also realized that Québec knew very little about its dark past regarding the lgbtq community. Anecdotally, I heard a lot of people talk about stonewall or mention that the Sex Garage Police raid was the stone wall of Québec, but 13 years before sex garage and xxx years before stonewall, the Truss Police raid happened in Montréal where 200 plus people were arrested in a gay bar. Subsequent protests followed and the Québec government modified its charter of human rights to forbid discrimination based off of gender and sexual orientation. The first gov of its kind to do so. Another fun fact about my new home, Québec was the first province or state in NA to grant civil unions in XXXX to its citizens. Marriage being under federal jurisdiction, Québec couldn’t grant marriage to everyone so created a civil unions that mirrored marriage. This happened XX years before canada legalized same sec marriage.
- Created 10 new articles Added category to 20 existing articles
- So, in aout a year, we were able to create 10 new articles and add the Catégorie:LGBT au Québec to 20 existing articles. This allowed us to grow this category by a little over 23 %.
- This activities are very challenging and working with Wikipedia is not the easiest thing in the world. Participation of participants The Wikipedia criteria of what is a credible source Le Devoir & LaPresse Sources from marginalized communities are simply that, marginal and do not have national coverage. By principle, that newspapers and magazines sources have to come from national sources, the Wikipedia community in a way contributes to systems of oppression. What I am trying to do here is talk about with fellow contributors, discuss at international forums like I recently did at the WikiConvention Francophone in Grenoble, France this past October and work within the Wikipedia community to loosed these guidelines and allow the sources from marginalized communities be admissible as credible sources. This is going to be a very long process and will probably take years to get things changed, but I not going to give up. This is a very time consuming activity The guidelines, recommendations and criteria : there are so many and I am still learning them There are often a lot of misconceptions of Wikipedia. To cite or not to cite … that is the question
- I really like this quote by Elenore Roosevelt. “Where do human rights begin? In small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination.” I think that making communities that have historically been silenced, erased or simply invisible, visible on Wikipedia helps contribute to social justice and human rights. People have a right to exist, so that means they have a right to exist in our information sources, they have the right to exist in our libraries, they have the right to exist. In 2018, almost 2019, if a community does not exist on Wikipedia, does it even exist ?
- Let’s circle back and read again Kelly’s quote. "The cultural capital of Wikipedia is such that existence within it denotes a level of power and importance. The phenomenon of considering something or someone truly significant or insignificant, through its presence or absence on Wikipedia, can be a damaging one.” « Le capital culturel de Wikipédia est tel que l'existence en elle dénote un niveau de pouvoir et d'importance. Le phénomène de considérer quelque chose ou quelqu’un de vraiment significatif ou insignifiant, par sa présence ou son absence sur Wikipédia, peut en être néfaste » (traduction libre) (Doyle, 2018 : P. 57) For me, I am worried that if a young québécois or québécoises goes looking for LGBTQ+ realities about his or her community and then stumbles upon nothing in French, they may think that their reality does not exist in their province and in their language. What worries me even more is that if that very same francophone person stumbles across articles only in English, this person may think that their reality does not exist in their langauge and to live their reality, they have to leave their language and assimilate to English. By contributing to closing the gender, sexuality and LGBTQ+ gaps in Francophone Wikipedia, I like to think that I am helping young and older people realize that they exist and their realities exist in French.
- Just for fun, I wanted to let you know that there is a similar categor for Michigan. I wonder how many librarians in the room are tasking themselves, how can I get involved in Wikipedia in my subject areas or simply because I have knowledge that I want to share ?
- So, what can we do as librarians: We already have all the skills and knowledge necessary to learn wikipedia and teach wikipeida. We already organize events, why not a Wiki event ? Use our subject expertise to contribute to wikipedia articles in those areas, or co-organize events with student groups and profs in our subject areas. Maybe work with the faculty in our subject areas to brink Wikipedia into the classroom. There are many ways we can contribute. If you don’t know where to start, have a look at Wiki Education or at the Leveraging Wikipedia book I keep shamelessly quoting.
- For our archivist colleagues many of the same things our librarians can do, you can do too . Wikidata, Wikimedia commons and Wikipedia are great platforms for promoting archival materials. I would say, look at your large archival fonds and see if there are Wikidata entries about them and add your archival holdings to the entry
- Another Library Scholar I like to cite is R. David Lankes. In his Book, Expect More: Demanding Better Libraries for Today’s Complex Society, he writes: “The Mission of Librarians is to Improve Society Through Facilitating Knowledge Creation in their Communities”n(Lankes, 2011: P.15) This citation screams Wikipedia and Library intersecctions. I have another Lankes quote for you in a few slides.
- I have been thinking about how my professor colleagues could get involved in this movement Stop the Villainization Teach it and understand it (maybe with a librarian) You use it, your students use it, your friends and family use it. Your field expertise Contribute to those articles and encourage your grad students to do the same Wikipedia in the classroom Teach with Wikipedia Let your students contribute to the world’s biggest source of democratized information Think Equity Underrepresentation of Women, People of Colour and LGBTQ+ Peoples
- Wiki Education will partner with librarians and professors to bring Wikipedia into the classroom if ever anyone is this room wants to drink the Koolaid with me, maybe start here. ;-)
- Final Lankes Quote : “Bad Libraries build collections. Good libraries build services (of which a collection is only one). Great libraries build Communities” « Des mauvaises bibliothèques développent des collections, des bonnes bibliothèques conçoivent des services ( dont une collection n’en est qu’un) et des grandes bibliothèques forgent de la communauté » (traduction libre) Working with Wikipedia is my attempt at being a great librarian and contributing to making the McGill University Library a great library. All of our libraries are a part of a community, and we can help build them. We also are very well positioned to listen to the voices of communities that have historically and still very well may be marginalized and ignored. My encouragement to everyone here is to maybe look at the ways Wikipedia or the other Wikimedia projects can intersect with your work and your passions.
- Thank you. Maye I take any questions ?